EARLY CLINICAL PROGNOSIS FOR HIGH-RISK CHEST PAIN PATIENTS USING SMART TEXTILES

Abstract

According to statistics, up to 40% of emergency admissions are due to chest tightness or chest pain. However, merely based on the patient’s current symptoms such as chest pain, it is difficult for a physician to give an instant diagnosis as most cardiovascular diseases are chronic. To address this issue, it is necessary to provide a set of tools to indicate the patient’s status during hospitalization to help the physician in diagnosis. It is thus our primary objective to design and develop a wearable heart rate monitoring system and prediction tool that can measure the patient’s heart rate parameters, allow him/her to move around easily, and which also can effectively improve the medical personnel’s working efficiency. This research utilizes conductive filament to design textile to integrate electric circuit with clothing. Using a conductive vest and chest belt that can be worn comfortably, our system can continuously record patients’ physiological index parameters during their hospitalization. Physiological index parameters of multiple patients can then be transmitted wirelessly and recorded in a physician-end computer. At the end of their hospitalization, the patient’s original physiological indices together with the recorded heart rate variability (HRV) parameters can then be summarized to assess the risk score of their discharging from hospital. This paper adopts the concept of TIMI risk score, while adding every index of HRV measured when subjects are hospitalized. The risk score can hence be used to provide emergency physicians as a basis for an early prognosis and subsequently a better hospital-discharging assessment of patients with chest pain. The accuracy of the proposed prognosis has been verified with the 3-day and 30-day recall rate of the patients and the result has been shown to be promising for chest pain patients in emergency admission units.